Worker at Britain’s Hong Kong Consulate is feared detained in China

China has detained an employee of the British Consulate in Hong Kong after he crossed the border into the mainland, his family and his girlfriend said, raising fears that Chinese authorities might be targeting travellers they suspect of supporting the Hong Kong protests.

The apparent detention of the employee, Cheng Man Kit, a trade officer for the consulate, was striking in that it highlighted many of the fears that ignited the protests. The demonstrations began in June over a bill that would allow extradition to mainland China, which critics said would put the city’s residents at risk of facing the murky judicial Chinese system controlled by the Communist Party.

Cheng, who is 28 and also goes by the name Simon, travelled to Shenzhen, the city just across the border from Hong Kong, to attend a business conference Aug 8 but did not return the same day, as planned, his family said in a statement Wednesday morning. It said a lawyer had confirmed his detention in Shenzhen but not the reasons for it nor his whereabouts.

He exchanged messages with his girlfriend, Annie Li, even as he was heading back to the border, aboard the recently opened high-speed railway that links Shenzhen to Hong Kong. “Passing through,” he wrote to her in English on WeChat, the Chinese message app, at 10:42 that night. “Pray for me.” As of Tuesday, he had not been heard from since.

Britain’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office said in a statement Tuesday that it was providing support to Cheng’s family and seeking further information from authorities in Hong Kong and in the Chinese province of Guangdong, which includes Shenzhen.

“We are extremely concerned by reports that a member of our team has been detained returning to Hong Kong from Shenzhen,” the statement said.

China’s police and judiciary routinely operate in secrecy, and security authorities in Guangdong did not respond to inquiries about the case.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Geng Shuang, said at a regularly scheduled briefing in Beijing that he had no knowledge about Cheng’s disappearance. Asked again, Geng said, “I don’t have any understanding of this matter.”

It was not clear whether Cheng had participated in any of the Hong Kong protests. As the protests have intensified, however, officials in China have repeatedly blamed other countries, including Britain, for fomenting unrest. That could have made him a target for security services.

A 42-page document that the Foreign Ministry provided to The New York Times on Tuesday said, “Certain forces in the US and Britain have deliberately ignored extreme violence in the illegal protests and attempted to beautify mobsters as campaigners of ‘freedom, democracy and human rights.’ ”

Cheng, a Hong Kong resident, worked for the consulate’s branch of Scottish Development International, a trade and investment promotion office, according to family members and his Facebook biography.

He holds a British national overseas passport, which entitles him to consular representation but does not allow him to work or live in Britain.

China does not recognise that status, which Britain created for Hong Kong residents before it returned the city to Chinese control in 1997.

Cheng’s disappearance, first reported by HK01, an online Hong Kong news organisation, prompted calls for another protest, this time in front of the British Consulate on Wednesday evening.

“The Beijing authority wants to create a chilling effect,” said Michael Mo, one of the organisers, who knows Cheng. “It is a reminder that whether the extradition bill is passed or not, there are still ways that the authorities can find to harass you by whatever means.”

Cheng’s family reported him missing Aug 9. The next day, an official in Hong Kong’s immigration office “told us that Simon has been administratively detained, but said that they could obtain no information on why, where and for how long he was to be detained,” the family’s statement said.

Under Chinese law, suspects held in administration detention can be held for up to 15 days without court hearings or access to lawyers. Relatives are supposed to be notified, but the family said they had received no information.

“Simon’s disappearance and detention without any reason will create panic among the investors and entrepreneurs globally,” Li, his girlfriend, wrote in a statement.

“We just want Simon to come home,” she said by telephone. “We don’t want anything else.”

Chinese border officers have stepped up checks on people crossing the border from Hong Kong. They have begun routinely searching the phones of people who enter the mainland from Hong Kong, apparently to identify people sympathetic to the protest movement and to prevent photographs or other information about the demonstrations from spreading to the mainland.

Immigration and police officials in Hong Kong did not disclose any details about Cheng.

“This case is currently being handled by the regional missing person unit in Kowloon West,” a police spokesman, Kong Wing Cheung, said at a news briefing Tuesday, referring to the neighbourhood that includes the new high-speed railway station. He said Hong Kong police, like the family, said they had not received any official notices about the case from mainland authorities.

2019 New York Times News Service